Usage of Behavioral Biometric Technologies to Defend Against Bots and Account Takeover Attacks

Tuesday, January 29, 2019 - 11:00 am–11:30 am

Ajit Gaddam, Visa Inc.

Abstract:

Frictionless strong authentication is a critical driver for enabling ecommerce and many other modern technology systems to thrive. In this talk, I showcase the challenges of tackling modern sophisticated machine based attacks and other malicious human activity attempting account takeover using stolen or compromised credentials. This is followed by a quick dive into the engineered solution that can perform behavioral analytics utilizing biometric data and how it tackles machine learning problems at the scale of hundreds of millions of authentication attempts. Insight is provided into implementation challenges, machine learning model generation, and finally integration into a very complex ecosystem. This talk will also showcase wins and how this eventually enabled a zero-trust environment.

Ajit Gaddam is the Head of Security Engineering at Visa, where he is responsible for building large scale machine learning driven defenses, leading engineering programs, and providing expert guidance on cybersecurity matters. He has presented at conferences worldwide including Black Hat, Strata Hadoop, COSO Dubin, and GCS Ukraine. Ajit has been quoted by major media organizations and his work showcased in academic journals, security publications, and in two published books. He is an active participant in various open source and information security standards bodies, is a prolific inventor of disruptive technologies (over 80+ global patents) and moonlights as an instructor (SANS, community colleges).